Bushiri Church takes government to court again tomorrow

The Gaborone High Court has postponed to tomorrow an urgent application by Shepherd Bushiri’s Enlightened Christian Gathering (ECG) to stop Government from closing down the Church.

The Church received the notice of closure from Government this past Monday.

The bitter battle between Government and the ECG Botswana will be heard before High Court judge, Godfrey Nthomiwa.

This was confirmed by the National Secretary for the ECG Botswana branch, Pelotshweu Baeng in an Exclusive interview with The Voice this evening.

He said that they filed the court papers this evening. “We received a letter this past Monday from the Minister citing that they have decided to close down all our branches. The letter is dated February 12 but it was only delivered this past Monday,” he said.

“We approached the courts to seek a temporary interdict.We do not know why they sat on the letter for the whole month. In the last case, the interdict was against the police because they had no instruction from the registrar of societies to close down the Church but they tried to do so anyway,” said Baeng.

Baeng further said that they have information that the Minister’s decision is politically motivated.

This comes after Bushiri was also previously placed under Visa requirement.

Baeng says the Church has been in communication with Bushiri over the latest development and that he is praying for them and has told them to do all that is possible to comply with the law.

Late last year, ECG was given 28 days to appeal government’s decision to close the church down after its failure to comply with some registration clauses.

The church appealed to the Minister but was turned down.

ECG currently has 14 branches across Botswana and are hoping to have opened 20 more by next week.